This week’s Poll Position question is:

I’ll run down the options after the jump.

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Having your own super-powers would be a neat challenge, but would you willingly impose them on your child? That’s the heart of this week’s Poll Position:

The way I see it, you have two sets of consideration here. First, what effect would having those powers from a young age have on a youngster? And second, how would their abilities affect your ability to parent them effectively while they are growing up? Looking at them one-by-one:

1. Flash: I think this set of powers presents the fewest disadvantages in terms of childhood development and parenting. Granted, they could more easily run away from home, but if you’re at the point where your kid’s fleeing your house, you probably have bigger problems than speed. However, the super-fast metabolism also requires huge amounts of food, which would be darn difficult to keep up with.
2. Human Torch: I’ve had nephews who almost burned their houses down playing with matches, I shudder to think what a five year old who can hurl fireballs would be like.
3. Professor Xavier: On the one hand, I think being a child with instant access to the most intimate thoughts of everyone around you would hopelessly warp you. On the other hand, it’s possible that knowing everyone else that fully would make you much warmer and stronger and more confident since there could be no lies where you’re concerned. But I don’t think I could in good conscience take that risk with my son or daughter.
4. Spider-Man: Most of Peter Parker’s problems stem not from his powers but from other factors in his life, so as a “naked” power set this one is pretty attractive. However you almost have to live in a city with tall buildings for Spider-Man to be the most effective — if you have nothing to swing from, travel gets problematic, and what good is it crawling the walls at Walgreen’s, you know?
5. Superman: How do you parent a god? What if your kid turns out to be a bad apple, as they sometimes do, and you’ve given them the ability to kill everyone on the planet without breaking a sweat? Having Superman’s powers yourself is one thing, giving them to someone else is something else entirely.

So having thought through all that, I think I’d probably choose Spider-Man. He’s strong, can avoid trouble, is quick, and couldn’t do mass harm if he turned out badly.

This week’s Poll Position question is:

Discussion after the jump.
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This week’s poll position is:

Discussion after the jump.

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For this week’s poll I’m asking you to think outside the box. If you’re a man, think about what it would be like a woman. And if you’re a woman already, think about what it would be like to be a man, thinking about being a woman. And if you’re a hermaphrodite, imagine what it would be like if you had to choose only one gender. And if you’re … but enough of that. The actual question for this week is:

Discussion and deep thinking after the jump.

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So here’s a question for you:

The key here is that you get the character’s entire power set, but you can only use each power once. Do you choose someone with lots and lots of powers, none of which is crazy awesome, or someone who can do only one or two things but at a massive scale? Plus you have to factor in whether you’re of a chaotic or orderly bent — would you use your power(s) for personal gain, or to help others? Here’s my take on each of the options, let me know yours in the comments!

• Deadman: Basically you’d be able to become immaterial and take possession of one other person for a few hours, at most a day or two. The question would be who you should take over, and what you would do as them. For instance, you might take over a multi-millionaire, withdraw several million dollars, and stash it in a secure location. When the guy wakes up he won’t remember anything from the time you were in charge, meaning no one will know when you go nab the stash.
• Hulk: The choice for those who just want to cut loose and wreak havoc for a few hours. Not my cup of tea, but I know a lot of people like it.
• Jean Grey: A broader power set than the first two on the list, you’d be able to read someone’s mind, use TK, and a couple of other juicy bits. To some degree this choice depends on whether you’re thinking of early X-Men Jean Grey, or Dark Phoenix-era stuff. Snuffing out suns is heavy sauce, but on the other hand it’d be nice to be able to read your spouse’s mind and have a real heart-to-heart conversation about a few things, you know?
• Martian Manhunter: Many useful powers is the main draw of J’Onn J’Onnz. Flying would be an absolute trip, and shape-shifting would have some real possibilities. You could be super-strong for a while, and dematerialize to phase through the occasional wall. You also get telepathy, though not as powerful or far-ranging as Jean Grey’s.
• Spiderman: Let’s face it, slinging your way through New York looks like awesome fun.
• Superman: The granddaddy of all super-hero power sets, there’s not a lot Superman can’t do. But it’s all physical — how much good are you going to get out of a blast of super-cold breath?
• Thor: The main power here that appeals to me is storm mastery. Imagine if you could have told Hurricane Katrina — or now, Gustav — to turn into a pleasant shower. You’d have an incredible opportunity to save lives. As a bonus, you’d get one free trip to Asgard or some other crazy dimension, which is kind of neat.
• Wolverine: My main thought here is to save his mutant healing factor until you’re like ninety years old. Turn it on and voila! You get another 90 years and a fresh young body to boot. Hard to beat that. Alternatively, if you get hit by a bus tomorrow, you’ve got a “Get out of Death Free” card, which also doesn’t suck.

Super powers are usually presented as all up-side. But there are always drawbacks to any ability, and this week I got to thinking about what powers would have their pluses outweighed by their minuses.

Here are my thoughts on them, I’m curious to hear how you parse out the choices.

• Immortality: The drawback here is having to see all of your loved ones, all of your enemies, everything you ever knew or loved turn to dust in what will feel like the blink of an eye. That would suck. And you’d want some way to make sure that not only would you be immortal, but immortally young. Living forever as a shriveled, disease-ridden, pain-wracked husk is not exactly optimal.
• Precognition (ability to see the future): If you know how everyone around you — including you — is going to die, wouldn’t that ruin your day? And if you knew in advance what everyone was going to say or do, with no surprises ever, life it seems would hardly be worth living.
• Super strength: I would be terrified of crushing my loved ones when I went in to hug them. Or of killing someone accidentally with an incautious swing of the arms. I’d feel like a bull in a china shop, constantly on edge.
• Telepathy: I’m pretty sure we’re all better off not knowing what we’re all really thinking.
• Time travel: The Butterfly Effect would be a huge pain in the butt here, as I’d come back to my regular timeline only to discover that something I did in the past accidentally killed off all of humanity. Oops. No thanks, I can do without that level of responsibility.

Last week we went high-brow and intellectual with the father question, so this week we go low-brow and try to decide who would beat the snot out of whom. In our Champions game we would call this a “slug fest scenario”, or, more commonly, “Let’s go find a large open space” in which to fling fistfulls of dice at each other. So here are your choices:
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Not all fathers are super, but not all supers are good fathers. I’m not sure what brought it up this week, but I got to thinking about what makes a good father, and what makes a good super-hero, and whether there was much overlap between the two. The fact is, we don’t have a lot of examples of comic book characters who are also parents, the notable exception being Reed and Sue Richards and their son Franklin. So here’s our question of the week:

I included some villains in there too because hey, some people want to inherit the Evil Empire, you know? And I added a caveat that you won’t inherit their powers because otherwise the question becomes basically “Whose powers do you want”, which I’ve done before. I wanted to instead get you thinking about the qualities of fathers and supers and where the intermix.

From a purely mercenary perspective, of course, there are some people who would answer based on financial considerations — why get Peter Parker’s kitty full of nothin’ when you could be the King of Latvia, after all? But then, you have to consider what Victor Von Doom would be like as a day-to-day dad.

I look forward to hearing what you all think about the choices, and why you choose what you do.

Each week I spend time thinking up a (hopefully) interesting poll question, and I’m always fascinated to see people vote. But why do they vote the way they do? Why wouldn’t you automatically pick Firestorm’s powers to help you through a post-nuclear-holocaust world — the guy can make literally anything he can think of!

So starting this week, each Sunday when I put up the new poll, I’ll do so in a post like this one, so people can leave comments if they so please on what they think of the various options, why they chose as they did, etc. So here’s the first one:

I play poker every week and I’ve often wondered what super-powers would make for the best gambler. And then I wonder why so few super-heroes ever go to Vegas and actually gamble — She-Hulk was there in one series I put in the Mashup last week, but she just beat the crap out of stuff. Why not hit the tables, too?! But then, taking the element of chance out of it pretty much ruins the fun, I suppose.

Of course, the actual heroes on the list would never use their powers this way, so that part of it’s moot. But that’s why the question is not “Which of these characters would you want to see go to Vegas” but rather “YOU have their powers, what would YOU like to be able to do”!

Flash: Move at super-speed and on one can see you affect the way the dice come up, or where the Roulette ball lands. You’re a winner every time, invisibly!
Longshot: Megariffic luck, say no more.
Magneto: Why gamble when you can just rip the door off the safe? Seriously, the safest thing to do with Magneto’s powers would be to simply maneuver the levers inside the slot machines to pay off.
Plastic Man: Similarly to Magneto, when inserting coins you could slip your finger into the machine and manually make the slots pay.
Professor Xavier: It’s a lot easier to win at poker or blackjack when you can read your opponent’s mind to see what they’re holding.
Superman: X-Ray Vision for the card games. Super-speed for the dice and roulette games. How unfair is it that he’s, like, five different super-heroes all at once? I guess that’s why he’s Big Blue.

That’s what I was thinking, but I’d love to hear why you pick the one you pick. And stay out of my poker game!